


Goodbye

by Aelfgyfu



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelfgyfu/pseuds/Aelfgyfu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has never been good at goodbyes; in fact, he usually avoids them altogether. Not this time. Donna's had a good, full life by the time he sees her again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and goodness knows who else. I'm just borrowing them, and I'm not making any money. It will only make sense if you watch, so watch! And buy the DVDs, as I do!  
> AUTHOR'S NOTES: I am most grateful to Brilliant Husband, who gave me the original idea; thanks also to Aurora Bovarum for her corrections and suggestions! All remaining errors, infelicities, and incoherences are my own.  
> First posted to The Mead Hall 7 September 2008.

He wasn't prepared to do it right away, but once the idea occurred to him, he couldn't not do it. He made the crucial phone call right away, to warn the others to stay away, but it took some time to work himself up to seeing her. It might have been a week, it might have been ten days; without a human in the TARDIS, he didn't keep track of time awfully well, though he did still tend to think of it in terms of Earth, human, Common Era timekeeping.

He just couldn't shake the idea: she was the one person whose timeline he must be sure never to cross directly again, so jumping straight to the end of her life held no dangers for anyone.

He did his homework, of course. He took the TARDIS to a records office long after she must have died, even with a little Timelord admixture to her. He found everything he needed—the precise time, the place, the room number—with a little trouble. He probably could have called on Captain Harkness for help, but this business would be difficult enough without Jack. The Doctor had become more comfortable with Jack's fixedness in the universe over the last couple of years of his life (Earth, human, Common Era timekeeping), but he couldn't deal with that strange permanence and the shiny teeth and everything else that came with Jack when all he wanted was to say a proper goodbye to Donna.

His researches completed, the Doctor landed the TARDIS in an alleyway two blocks from the hospice and walked, taking his time, feeling the drizzle on his face, almost wondering if he shouldn't have left the TARDIS farther away. But there'd be time enough to walk afterwards—too much time, he knew.

The hospice was easy to find: a quiet old brick building with well-tended grounds. He pushed open the solid wood door, smiled vaguely in the direction of the woman at a desk, and took the right-hand corridor that opened up next to the waiting area without hesitation. No one stopped him, of course, because he knew where he was going, so he must belong. The carpet absorbed the sound of his footfalls as he walked to the next turning. The one thing he didn't know was how many people were in the room right now, and whether they knew anything about him. 

"Doctor!" 

Apparently there were two things he didn't know, because he found himself grunting under the force of an unexpected hug.

"I knew you'd show up! Well, I figured." Jack hadn't changed at all. The Doctor wondered why he hadn't felt his presence; he could recognize it now. That little disturbance in the fabric of things seemed stronger than it ought to be if Jack were in Wales where he belonged.

The Doctor managed to disentangle himself from Jack's arms and the omnipresent greatcoat—how did Jack keep it intact through all his adventures? Maybe he had a whole wardrobe full of identical coats and kept pulling them out, one after the other.

"Oh, sorry!" he said, realizing belatedly he should be saying something, because Jack wasn't smiling at him anymore but frowning at the silence.

"It hasn't been that long for you, has it?" Jack seemed to be examining his face.

"No. Nowhere near as long as it's been for you. But--you were waiting for me? Did you need me for something?"

Jack grinned again. "No. I mean, it's always great to see you, Doc, but...." He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. "I thought you'd be here, but I wasn't certain; I thought someone ought to tell Donna, someone who was there. Hardly anyone knows anymore. So I was here in case you weren't."

"That's good, that's good of you," the Doctor said a little awkwardly.

"Of course, I didn't have the advantage of going to the future to check when she'd actually go, because someone keeps disabling my manipulator. I've been here two days. I tried to talk to her, but the family threw me out."

All the Doctor could think to say was, "oh."

"It's a good thing you called Martha to tell us to keep away," Jack said, filling the silence after a moment. "I mean, we had no idea! We were thinking of recruiting Ms. Noble to Torchwood; we might have shown up on her doorstep, and seeing two or three of us--"

"But you didn't," the Doctor interrupted. He'd thought to warn them pretty quickly.

"No." Jack smiled. "Martha told us what we had to do, we gave Mickey's hacking skills a workout, Ianto figured out where to dig for records, Gwen knew where law enforcement types might have paper backups; we had to wipe out every trace of what she'd done. We told Colonel Mace—where do they get these names?—anyway, we made sure no one would bother Donna. No one from UNIT, from any branch of Torchwood--except Four, we still haven't found them. We made sure no one would approach her. Ever. Good thing we had Martha and Mickey around right then, though Ianto insisted he could take care of the computers himself."

Jack smiled, but it wasn't that boyish smile he'd had when the Doctor first met him. The Doctor knew how it felt to see everyone and everything you cared about vanish, to lose everything. That didn't mean he knew what to say. He mustered the most sympathetic look he could. "I suppose they're all...."

"Not all of them!" Jack said with a sudden grin that recalled that much younger Jack for just a moment. "But you didn't come to chat with me. And you've seen me between dropping us off just after we brought Earth back and our meeting now. I mean, you will see me—will have seen me. We'll talk about Torchwood and catch up—well, more than once. I should let you see her. It's not me she'll want to see when she remembers." He smirked a little. "Though she wasn't the one objecting yesterday. Good luck with the family, though. They got her stubbornness. And her voice." He patted the Doctor on the shoulder. "See ya 'round."

"That sounds promising," the Doctor muttered to himself. "Hey, wait--how many are in there?" He had to duck back around the corner to catch Jack.

Jack shrugged. "I think it's only four of them. Just seems like more." Jack waved and turned to walk away again.

With a little less confidence, the Doctor found the right room. He thought for a moment. Knock, or just barge in? If Jack was right, Donna's family might not appreciate his entering unannounced. But then again, if Jack was right, if he knocked, he might not get past the door. Maybe Jack was just having him on? He considered for a moment, but then the fact that he could hear two or three voices at once through the heavy door did seem to back up what the Captain had said.

Well, barge in it was.

"Hallo! Good to see you all!" The Doctor gave them his very best grin--he couldn't help but think "Take that, Harkness!"--and brushed past a middle-aged man to Donna's bedside. She looked smaller than he'd ever seen her before, and very tired. The red hair had all faded to grey, but it still poured around her head on the pillow. She had an oxygen cannula under her nose, and tubes snaked in and out of the bedclothes, but she was alert, and her eyes widened at his entrance.

"Just a minute!" said the man he'd just pushed aside, and then a girl was saying, "Who are you?" and two other people were starting to say something, but he put his hand out to the woman on the bed and tried to block the others out.

"Hello, Donna," he said more softly. "Remember me?"

She took his right hand with her right, as if to shake it, and the tremor in her hand made his stomach sink. He hated this, really hated it. The people he took with him didn't age much, really, in their time together. They'd stay with him for a bit; then they'd leave. Some would go back to their lives; a few.... But he tried to avoid seeing them again. He'd been less successful in this regeneration; he wasn't sure why.

"Should I?" Donna asked, far too quietly, and he could hardly hear her with the others all speaking. "Should I remember you?"

He held her hand rather than shaking it, just keeping it gently in his. It was warm.

"Right!" He turned to a slightly stout man in his forties. Her son. "Lee, I'm the Doctor. Donna hasn't told you about me because, well, she couldn't. Long story, that. I think she'll remember in a moment, and I'm prepared to help her if she doesn't." He glanced at the others. "Ann, David, Martha"--he had to bite his tongue not to say "wherever did you come up with that name?"--"lovely to meet you."

"We're done with doctors, the doctors can't do anything more," Lee declared.

Lee had hardly finished speaking before Martha said, "You're wet! You just came in from outside! You don't really expect us to believe--" and David, solidly built and twenty, simply moved to grab his arms. Hard.

"Oh, hang on!" he objected. There was a rail on the side of Donna's bed, and he grasped it with his left hand, keeping hold of her hand with his right.

Lee put a hand to his chest. "You don't belong--"

Donna said something, and the Doctor had to lean forward to hear it. Leaning forward somehow brought Lee and David forward too, so they could all hear her say, "Yes, hang on!"

Donna gave her family a familiar dirty look; the Doctor had been on the receiving end of it quite enough to get some pleasure from seeing it directed elsewhere.

"So you do remember!"

"No," she said, but her forehead was furrowed as if she was trying very hard to recall. "I'm just curious to hear what the hell kind of story you're about to tell me! Because my granddaughter is right! You don't work here!"

"Oh, that's the spirit!" He couldn't help but grin, even as hands tightened around his arms and a hand pushed him back upright. Her fingers slipped through his as she coughed drily.

The Doctor forged on. "I didn't say I work here; I'm not that kind of doctor! I'm the Doctor! The Doctor who travels through time and space--"

"Oh, this is worse than the one in the old coat!" declared Martha in disgust. Martha had her grandmother's red hair, though it was cut short, in a boyish style. She was crossing her arms across her chest in a way that seemed awfully familiar, even if she was only fifteen and smaller than Donna was now.

"But I liked the one in the coat," Donna sniffed. "You could have let him stay."

"Mum!" Lee's hand slipped from the Doctor's chest as he turned to face his mother.

"This one's too skinny." Her voice sounded firmer, surer than it had a moment ago.

"Yes!" the Doctor answered. "You always did say that. 'Try to give him a hug, you get a papercut!' That's what you told Martha Jones."

Donna watched him through narrowed eyes, almost unblinking.

"Skinny boys--skinny boy--in a suit, that's what you called me, last time...." He faltered. "I always thought I was just right!" He couldn't make it come out the way he wanted.

"Not that I'd want to hug you," she said, but then her eyes widened.

"But you did," he said quietly. "After Pompeii. After Midnight." 

Her lips came apart, but she said nothing. 

"And I never said 'thank you' after Midnight," he continued. "I should have. I was glad not to be alone then."

"Pompeii?" Donna's grandson asked, but the others were silent, watching them both.

"Veni, vidi, vici," Donna said in that atrocious school Latin accent, her voice still weak. She sat up, or tried to. Her daughter-in-law jumped forward to push the button that raised the head of the bed. Donna could have done it herself, but all her attention was on the Doctor.

"You do remember," he whispered.

"Fire," she said. "Lava, and--but--we saved them. One family, but we saved them." 

"Yes."

"And Midnight--the spa. The spa that they had to move to a whole other planet."

"She hasn't been delusional before," Ann hissed at her husband.

The Doctor realized Lee and David had stepped back from him.

"It's not delusion. It's memory," Donna said dismissively, and the Doctor's hearts ached to hear her voice so quiet even as they swelled to hear her remember, and he felt for once like she was right about his weight: he must be too skinny, because his chest just wasn't big enough.

"How could I have forgotten all that?" Her voice sounded dry and dusty at the end, and the Doctor pushed past Lee to a glass of water on the table beside her bed. 

"You had to forget," he told her as he handed her the water. "You can't live with the memories--with the knowledge."

"Who the hell are you, and what do you think you're doing?" demanded Lee, whose face was suddenly in front of the Doctor's.

"Donna?" the Doctor asked gently.

"He's an old friend, Lee. Now move so I can see him properly." She sipped some water.

"Mum?"

"Would you introduce us?" the Doctor asked.

Donna smiled, a smile so broad it made the whole trip worthwhile. "Of course. Doctor, this is my son, Lee; my grandson, David; my granddaughter, Martha; my daughter-in-law, Ann."

"Charmed, I'm sure," the Doctor said, shaking Lee's hand and turning to shake David's. Lee shook his hand, but David snatched his back.

"How do you know Gran?" he asked.

"We traveled together," Donna said before he could reply, and he couldn't help but grin. She hadn't changed, really.

"But you haven't traveled in ages, Mum!" Lee said.

"Nah," she replied faintly. "Lost my taste for it after I got sick."

"Sick?" the Doctor asked in concern. She was old; organ replacement only went so far, and they just couldn't keep her failing lungs and her failing kidneys going after she'd already lost her spleen and had her heart replaced. But she hadn't been sick all that long.

"I think she means years ago," her son explained, "when she was young. Well, not yet old."

"Oi!" Donna flicked her hand against her son's wrist, but she was really looking past them all, remembering.

"She got sick and lost her memory! Over a year of her life! She'd been temping, and she took some trips, and then she didn't remember anything but she was back home with Granny Sylvia and Great-Granddad!" Lee turned away and took the glass from her trembling hand.

"So that's what they told you?" The Doctor asked, though he needn't have bothered.

"Yeah," she said. "But they had to tell me something, right? I did notice eventually that..." She had to stop for breath. The next part came out as little more than a whisper, but everyone was listening now. "Oh, but God! How could I have forgotten! We did important things, and we had such great adventures, and I forgot all that!"

"It was forget or die," the Doctor said apologetically.

"And you made the choice for me?" Her eyes narrowed again and her mouth tightened.

"Do you wish I'd chosen differently?" he asked. 

Donna took a breath, as if to say something. She had said "no" over and over, said she wanted to stay. But he couldn't let her. He tipped his head, first to one side, then to the other, to indicate her family. She let the breath out slowly and nodded.

"Wait, I don't understand!" Martha said. "Explain!"

The Doctor looked to see the girl stabbing a finger at him. "Did you have a hand in her name?" he teased Donna.

"I might have made some suggestions." She smiled. "Can't recall why."

Ann blew out an annoyed breath.

"But--my God! All that we did, all that I saw, forgotten for all these years!" She coughed, and then coughed again. Lee helped her sip some more water. "And then I came back and forgot, and I did...nothing?"

"But you didn't, Gran!" insisted David, tossing an angry look at the Doctor. 

"Well, I did have a family. When I was with you, I never saw that coming," she whispered with a smile.

"And maybe a few other things over the years. Exposing fraud," the Doctor said. He was glad he'd done his homework. He hoped she'd gotten over that feeling that she wasn't important, that no one was listening, but apparently traces had lingered through the years.

"I lost my job over that!" she said, and she coughed, but she was still smiling after she took another sip. "The company folded."

"Yeah, you were out of work temporarily. The executives got twenty years! And a lot of honest people got their money back."

She shook her head. "Mostly stopped good money going after bad--too late to get much of it back."

"But it made a difference to a lot of people."

"Not saving the universe."

"Yeah, but you'd already done that. Can't repeat yourself, you know."

Donna laughed, but it turned into a cough, and then Lee helped her sit up a little more so that she could catch her breath.

"They wanted her to stay on the oxygen mask," said David proudly, "but she said it was too hard to talk around that."

"So who are you?" asked Lee again.

"Time for that later," the Doctor said. "When she's asleep," he added with a reassuring smile. They didn't know she probably wouldn't wake up again. She had less than two hours left; if he'd come sooner, he could be killing her himself, dredging up these memories, but no. He'd seen the records: it was multi-organ failure. Age would kill whom giant spiders and Vashta Nerada and Daleks could not.

"But you know, I should have caught it sooner," she said suddenly. "The evidence was all there--"

"No good thinking that way, Donna," the Doctor said. "There's lots of things I should have caught sooner." He tried to keep the sadness out of his voice. "And remembering *would have ended your life," he said, almost to himself.

"But now I can see--I can see it clearer than I ever did!" She had to break off, wheezing.

"Yeah. You'll be seeing a lot of things with great clarity now," he said, once she'd settled down and could hear him again. "Because your mind isn't just human any more. The Time Lord stuff--it's coming back."

"So I'm a Time Lady?" She arched her eyebrows at him and grinned widely.

"Well, not quite--but close enough, I suppose."

"For a little while, anyway." She started to say more, but stopped, and he just knew from her look that she knew everything. Now that she had all her own memories back, his would be flooding her mind too. She didn't have long now. But she wasn't alone, and she knew now how terribly important she was. Not that raising a family wasn't important; the Doctor himself realized that it was, though he preferred not to think about that most of the time. But now she knew everything.

Ann sat down in a chair on Donna's right, apparently accepting that all this could take a while.

"Why don't you tell them?" Donna asked breathlessly.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"Tell them everything! What we did! I can't...don't...." Lee was helping her sip from the glass before she had even reached for it. She swallowed, tilted her head, and added, "You know you want to. You love to talk!"

"I don't understand!" Lee asked. "Mum, who is he?"

"Who he says he is. A Time Lord. Worked with UNIT and Torchwood long before you ever heard of them." She leaned further back into her pillows.

"Oh, no! You've misremembered. Never worked with Torchwood. I mean, Jack Harkness may have worked with me on occasion--"

A chuckle from Donna cut him off, though it was short-lived. "Spoilers," she said, wrinkling her nose at him, adding in a sing-song voice, "Can't tell!" 

"What does that mean?" her granddaughter asked, more curious than challenging now.

"He's from, what, fifty years ago now!"

"Forty-eight." The Doctor nodded. He couldn't help bouncing on the balls of his feet a little. "But how would you know if I'd worked with UNIT or Torchwood? They've had no contact with you! Jack and his people saw to that."

Donna's huge smile looked like it should crack her papery skin, but it didn't dim. "Forty-eight years, yes! Well, Torchwood went public when people finally began to believe that aliens were real and we weren't all suffering from mass delusions, with all those invasions and attacks and the whole planet being dragged across the universe and out of time. They didn't mention you specifically on the feeds, but knowing what I do now, it's easy enough to work it out!" She took deep, gasping breaths after that little speech, and Ann grabbed an oxygen mask that had been out of sight on the other side of the bed and held it to her mouth, pulling the cannula out of the way. Donna tried to push the mask off, but her hands fell back on the bed.

"You said the Doctor should tell us, Mum. Maybe you should let him talk for a bit. You've got to save your breath!" The Doctor could see now that Lee hid his sadness well, but he wasn't ready to let go. He knew the feeling all too well.

Donna sighed, a stuttering sort of sound, and he wondered how he could ever have thought she talked too much, or too shrilly. 

"You save your breath a little longer," he said gently. "I can tell your family what you did, and you can remember with me, until it's time."

He felt experimentally at the rail and found a release to lower it so he could sit on the edge of the bed. Lee sat stiffly at Donna's left, on a chair he pulled to the very edge of the bed, as if he might have to jump up and restrain the Doctor at any moment.

But Donna nodded, and breathed from the oxygen mask, and he began.

"For me, it started when this loud redhead just suddenly appeared in my ship, the TARDIS, but I suppose for you, it started with a disastrous wedding."

"But Gran got sick before her wedding," Martha protested. "Before she even met Grandfather!" The Doctor turned and saw that she was perched on the foot of the bed, and her brother had pulled another chair up right behind her, looking over her shoulder.

Donna mumbled something into the oxygen mask. 

"Sorry?" the Doctor asked.

"Wrong disastrous wedding," she managed a little louder.

"You had two?" Lee asked in amazement.

"Well, this...first...one never quite came off," the Doctor began, and soon he found himself explaining it all. The aborted wedding, the groom who'd gotten his just desserts, the Racnoss under London. From there he slipped easily enough to their next meeting.

"I never did figure out what she was trying to signal me," he said with a laugh as he remembered her increasingly complicated gesticulations.

Donna mumbled again and then pushed the oxygen mask down. "Come on, it was bloody obvious!" She was starting to make the same gestures again, and she explained each one, even as her voice became fainter and her pauses grew longer. "Anybody but you could have figured it out!"

The Doctor looked around at four glazed expressions, noting they must have agreed with him, but he didn't argue. Lee pushed the mask back over her face.

The time slipped by all too fast as he took over the retelling, and Donna's eyes were closing. He had to abridge more and more, especially the last chapter of their journey together. He finished, "And she was brilliant. Brilliant even before she had my mind added to the mix," but Donna didn't argue or say anything, and he knew they were losing her.

And he couldn't stand it. He got to his feet, abruptly, and Donna didn't move. Lee jumped to check a monitor that showed her heartbeat and respiration, silently--thank God for that, because he didn't think that at that moment he could tolerate the noises those things usually emitted. 

"No, she's still here," her son told him, looking the Doctor full in the face. The Doctor knew that even after this short acquaintance, the man had learned to read him—not as well as his mother could, but he had that same quickness, even if he didn't favor her that much physically.

"Yeah," the Doctor said quietly.

"But she won't wake up again, will she?" Martha said, her voice going up and down uncertainly.

He tried to speak but found he couldn't. He'd come to say goodbye, but he couldn't say it. And he hadn't given her a chance. There was no time left; she'd be gone in less than a quarter of an hour. Surely she wouldn't wake up again. Massive organ failure. Nothing anyone could do. But no pain: she had medication, she had her family around her. And he should go, because he didn't belong here. He'd never been any good at goodbyes. He'd had multiple chances with Rose, and he'd still refused to do it properly, telling himself last time that it should be the other him, the human Doctor, who said anything important, so that she'd love that one and let go of him. But really, it had been an excuse he'd given himself so he wouldn't have to say the words to her face.

"Stay," Lee said, a hand on his arm.

He shook his head.

"From what you've said--from what she said, from how she looked at you--you're family too," the man insisted.

"Please?" added Martha.

He shook his head again. "Can't--"

But then her eyelids fluttered. "Not asleep," she said; he couldn't really hear it, just kind of see the words forming under the mask. "Mind won't quit."

Oh, God. He had killed her, was killing her right this minute. No, he told himself: Time Lord memories didn't destroy the remaining liver function, slow the breathing until it wasn't enough. He'd seen the death report. He wasn't changing anything.

Her fingers twitched. He sat back down, took her hand.

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world," she mouthed at him. "Thanks." Then she added, "Goodbye," and her eyes closed again.

He had no words. He tightened his hand on hers, just slightly, and tried to stop tears from coming to his eyes as the others in the room said, "Goodbye." He failed; the tears came in spite of himself, but the word just wouldn't.

"You can go now, Mum," Lee said, his voice breaking, with a kiss to her forehead. "It's okay. We're all with you now."

The Doctor stayed. For once in his long life, he stayed. And when it was all over, a few minutes later, Lee gave him a hug, and then Martha, and David shook his hand.

"I should have thanked her," he said finally, when he could speak again.

"I think you did," said Lee.

The rain fell steadily as the Doctor walked back to the TARDIS, even slower than he'd come. Her family knew; that was good. More importantly, she knew. He had done so very little for her, and taken it all away--but now he'd had a chance to give just a little of it back. It hardly counted, measured against what she'd done for him, but it would have to do.

There was one more thing he could do, for someone else he owed, and he took his TARDIS back more than forty-six years. He landed a few blocks away from his destination and walked, this time on a clear night, to a garden he'd seen once or twice before.

"Doctor!" Wilfrid started away from his telescope, mouth dropping open in surprise.

"She's nowhere near, right?" the Doctor whispered, just in case his researches had been wrong and he had brought danger here.

"No! No, she's on her honeymoon," Wilfrid said, not quite as he might have said "doing time in prison," but close enough.

"Good, good!"

"No! Not good!" Wilfrid shook his head sadly. "Do you know anything about the man? It won't last--if she has any sense."

"No. I mean, she does have sense, and it won't last. But you can't ever let on that I told you," the Doctor added sternly, although it hardly compared to the bigger secrets the man was keeping. The Doctor knew he'd keep those to his grave.

"Scout's honor," Wilfrid said, raising a hand and smiling. "I won't even tell Sylvia."

"No, she doesn't need to know." The Doctor smiled tentatively. "So you don't like him?"

"Oh, I supposed at first he was...all right. Does seem rather smitten with her, though I'm afraid that might not last. He's so quiet, and she's so lively! But he lacks something. A few things, actually. And then today!" Wilfrid glanced around. "I'm afraid I only have the one chair...."

"Oh, sit, sit!" The Doctor insisted. "I can stand. I've been sitting around enough these past few days.... You were telling me about Donna's young man?"

Wilfrid snorted. "He seemed all right. But he doesn't realize how special she is. I suppose nobody does, anymore, except for us, but any man had better think his wife's special on his wedding day, or he has no business marrying her!"

Donna's grandfather leaned forward conspiratorially. "They had a row about the vows. He's very high church--insisted he do the 'love and protect' and she do the 'honor and obey'." 

"And she married him anyway?" the Doctor asked, a little sad, because the Donna he'd come to know wouldn't have let anyone get away with that.

"She cut a side deal with the minister! He read out the bits they were to repeat, and when they got to the vows, he read out 'love, honor, and protect,' and of course Paul had said it before he realized! Then she used the same vow! None of that 'obey' stuff for my Donna!"

They shared a laugh before Wilfrid turned serious again. "And he gave her a look a man should never give his wife on their wedding day, let alone in front of witnesses."

The Doctor winced. "What did she do?"

"She smiled at him--gave him a big grin! And he had to smile back. I think she's forgiven--for now. But she's not the one who really needed forgiveness. 'Honor and obey' in this day and age--I may be from a previous generation, but even I wouldn't ask a woman to say that with me these days." Wilfrid shook his head. "I knew then it wouldn't last. I'd suspected before." He looked eagerly at the Doctor. "Not long, I take it?"

"Oh, I can't tell you that!" the Doctor said, straightening up, only then realizing he'd bent down to hear the man. "I told you too much already! And I didn't come to talk about the wedding."

"You didn't come to look at stars with an old man, either," Wilfrid said.

"Old man? I've got well over eight centuries on you!"

Wilfrid's eyebrows went up. "Then you must have learned by now to come to the point." The slight smile returning to his face softened the words.

"No, 'fraid I'm still not very good at that." The Doctor took a deep breath. "Look, this isn't easy to say."

"Bad news?" Wilfrid straightened in his chair. "Not Donna! But--"

"Not bad news for many, many years," the Doctor reassured him. Now that he was here, he found himself at a loss to explain why he had come. But Wilfrid had been so close to her, and Donna had shared her adventures with him; he hadn't just taken those memories from Donna, he'd taken them from her grandfather as well. And he was tired of taking without giving back.

He took a deep breath. "I came to you to tell you that those memories aren't gone forever. I couldn't let her remember until she was about to go anyway, because, well...you know.... But I've just come...I've just come from her deathbed. She'll remember. You won't be there, I'm afraid"--Wilfrid waved a hand dismissively--"but she'll have family around her."

"Family, now?" Wilfrid almost rose out of his chair at the thought.

"Yeah." The Doctor's mouth quirked upwards in spite of himself. "I can't tell you--I'm telling you too much already. But you'll see the first of them." He'd checked that too, making sure Wilfrid lived long enough to see his sole great-grandson born.

"My God!" Wilfrid's hand went to his mouth. "Really?" The man's eyes seemed awfully bright suddenly, and the Doctor felt his hearts going too fast again. He was going to need a holiday after all of this. But what was the point of a holiday alone?

"Really," the Doctor assured him. "And I've broken all kinds of rules just telling you this. But there's really no one to enforce them anymore, no one but me, and I'm positive I haven't done any harm. I should go before I say more, though." Or before my eyes start leaking again, he thought. "I just wanted you to know: this secret you're keeping? I know it's hard. I know it hurts not to be able to tell Donna how special she is, how much she can do, especially when she gets down on herself, or sells herself short. But it's worth it, it's really worth it. She's gonna have a great life! It may not make the papers, or the feeds, or whatever they call it years from now." He held himself back from saying that one piece of that life would, that she'd enjoy a brief celebrity when she uncovered that massive fraud. "But, like her, it'll be brilliant."

Wilfrid stood and put out his hand. "Thank you, Doctor," he said in a soft voice, as he shook the Doctor's hand.

"No," the Doctor said, remembering and forcing himself to say it aloud this time before it was too late. "Thank you. You and your granddaughter--you're amazing. I may not see you again; I don't know. But I wanted you to know that you're doing the right thing, keeping this secret, and that it's all worth it, in the end. Even Donna will think so."

"And she'll know," Wilfrid said solemnly, his eyes glistening.

"She'll know everything," the Doctor promised. "It's all I could give her...." He had to break off.

"You've given us our girl back," Wilfrid said. "And that's a great gift. Tell me--are you still alone?"

The Doctor shrugged. "For now. It hasn't even been two weeks for me, though."

Wilfrid nodded.

"I can't replace her," the Doctor added. "I'm sure someone else will come along with me in a bit. But Donna--she's unique."

Wilfrid nodded, and they said their goodbyes.

The Doctor returned to his TARDIS, and, having been assured that Donna was far from London, he waved to Wilfrid from the TARDIS as he left, as he had once before. He couldn't help but think that she'd been beside him that time. 

Well. Time to move on. He couldn't forget, but maybe he didn't have to spend every moment thinking of her. He should go somewhere he'd never been before. Hmm. The Lost Moon of Poosh? See what all the fuss was about? Many planets would hardly even notice if they lost a moon. But Poosh still reminded him too much of Donna.

Maybe not someplace new. Maybe just someplace where he could forget for a bit. He hadn't been to Raxacoricofallapatorius in a while. It was a good time for a visit there.

 

FIN


End file.
